


Murder Rooms Meta

by plumedy



Category: Murder Rooms: The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, Meta
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-12
Updated: 2020-02-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:28:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22673299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumedy/pseuds/plumedy
Summary: A collection of meta for various Rooms episodes and themes. See chapter titles for more information.
Kudos: 6





	1. Misc. TPE Observations (s01e01)

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote most of this a while ago for The Dark Beginnings, the Rooms fanblog I ran back in the day. That said, I may add more if I feel like it :)

  * The first shot in TPE is that of the remains of a gallows rope hanging over Heather’s head. Of course, first and foremost this is about Ian Coatley haunting her. But ALSO, it’s epic foreshadowing of the fact that Heather herself is a criminal and (because the rope is severed and rotten) will get away with her crimes.
  * > HEATHER: Sometimes, on evenings like this, I like to walk by the sea. Perhaps someday-
> 
> DOYLE: I would like nothing better in the world than to accompany you.

Doyle canonically avoids beaches like the plague. For him, the sea carries the one association, and it’s Elspeth and her death. This is him being ready to move on. This is him wanting to put Bell’s rooms of murder and terror behind him and lead a normal happy life. Too bad Heather has other plans...

  * Hettie (the servant who agrees to be shot at so that Turnavine might test his magnetic ~~shit~~ ship protector)? Was originally (IRL and in Doyle’s The Stark Munroe Letters) Turnavine’s _wife_. Considering Turnavine’s attitude towards her, I think this is a suitable enough change.
  * The text Heather Grace reads out loud to Doyle in her appointment is from "The Manufacturing and Metropolitan Districts of England" - a series of publications describing the “[life] of the industrial poor throughout England” in the 19th-century _Morning Chronicle._ Among other things, it included an excerpt from Wm. N. Lambdin’s book Rambles in Europe - the one Heather Grace is reading. 

Curiously, the excerpt goes like this:

> **At night it is that the strange anomalies of London are best seen**. **Then, as the hum of life ceases and the shops darken** , and the gaudy gin palaces thrust out their ragged and squalid crowds, to pace the streets, London puts on its most solemn look of all. On the benches of the parks, in the nitches of the bridges, and in the litter of the markets, are huddled together the homeless and the destitute. The only living things that haunt the streets are the poor wretches who stand shivering in their finery, waiting to catch the drunkard as he goes shouting homewards.

([x](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fpaperspast.natlib.govt.nz%2Fcgi-bin%2Fpaperspast%3Fa%3Dd%26d%3DNZ18500413.2.7&t=YmRkZGI0NmQ3Y2I1NmViMzNkY2IwNTE2ZGE4NjhjNmZkZTZiYmNkNyx2dWkzU0JVQQ%3D%3D&b=t%3AN2YBVm_t7T2LJKDeLx_sKg&p=https%3A%2F%2Fthedarkbeginnings.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F97078456951%2Fthe-manufacturingmetropolitan-districts-of&m=1))

A nice reference to the basic theme of the series, isn’t it? And it really says something about Doyle’s interests.

  * Speaking of the show's foreshadowing of Heather Grace's role in the story, this scene does so rather transparently by implicitly referencing the saying "eyes are the mirror of the soul":




	2. The Comprehensive Summary of the Historical Background of Murder Rooms: The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes

Conan Doyle met Dr. Joseph Bell in the late 1870s. Doyle was a student at Edinburgh University; Bell was his lecturer. Both seem to have been thoroughly impressed with each other from the very beginning. Bell had later said: “I always regarded [Doyle] as one of the best students I ever had”; he had also made Doyle his outpatient clerk, an event about which Doyle humbly wrote: “for some reason which I could never understand he singled me out from the crowd of students who frequented his ward”.

It is easy to understand Doyle’s admiration for Bell, because the latter was truly an extraordinary man in multiple regards. Firstly, of course, he was a brilliant and brave surgeon; once, as a youth, he tended to a little boy sick with diphtheria, and to save this boy, Bell sucked the diphtheric membranes from his throat with the help of a small steel tube. Unfortunately, he wasn’t careful enough, and shortly after that he became ill himself. The disease had him bedridden and paralysed; when he recovered (which was nothing short of a miracle, for back then there was no known cure and diphtheria was quite the deadly illness), he was left with a noticeable limp for the rest of his life. This is why in Murder Rooms, Richardson’s Bell always walks with a cane.

Secondly, he was simply a very kind-hearted man. “He was most kind and painstaking with the students,” Doyle wrote of him, “a real good friend.” Jessie Saxby, another friend of Bell’s, recalls that for years someone had been anonymously sending her library cards - which she, as a Scottish folklore specialist, desperately needed and could not afford - and she always suspected it was Bell; but he would not admit to having done anything of the sort until much later, when he finally confessed that the gifts were his.

He also, like his Murder Rooms alter ego, had what they call a “pawky Scottish sense of humour”. Some of the answers he gave to the questionnaire Saxby once asked him to fill out provide a fine illustration:

> “Your pet aversion? - Company manners.
> 
> Your besetting sin? - Stinginess and general meanness.
> 
> Highest worldly aspiration? - To keep out of the Calton Jail!
> 
> What most excites your pity? - A shy student who is yet to be ‘plucked’.”

But most importantly, of course, he really did possess the remarkable powers of observation that Conan Doyle later gave to Sherlock Holmes. A few of the deduction sequences we see in Murder Rooms either directly describe the deductions once made by the real Joseph Bell or are based on them. Thus, the very first deduction Doyle hears Bell make in the pilot episode - the one about a man who has two horses of different colours - is a word-for-word repetition of the real Conan Doyle’s account of a “trick” Dr Bell once performed in front of his “audience of Watsons”. Another example would be the autopsy from ‘The Photographer’s Chair’, the one where Bell directs Doyle’s attention to the letter “D” tattoed on the chest of the deceased and says that this is how deserters were marked during the Crimean War. While not being literally the same as its real-life analogue, this scene is based on an episode during which Bell had drawn similar conclusions from the appearance of one of his patients.

The series stays remarkably faithful to the real historical timeline in many other ways that do not directly concern the actual forensic activities of its characters, and where it does not do so, it throws in subtle references to Doyle’s literary works instead.

  * The depiction of young Doyle’s unfortunate household situation in the pilot episode is historically accurate, as many fans of Sir Arthur are, no doubt, aware. In addition, the mysterious figure of Bryan Waller, the Doyles’ lodger (about whom very little is actually known), is elaborated upon in a way that is eerily plausible. Being one of the family’s main sources of income, he had considerable power over them; it is not hard to imagine him exerting it in abusive and evil ways, especially as afterwards he made Mary Foley, Doyle’s mother, his mistress.
  * The admirable little speech Dr. Bell gives in front of his students in the pilot episode is an almost direct quotation from one of Doyle’s non-Sherlock Holmes related short stories, _The Leather Funnel_ :



> “The charlatan is always the pioneer. From the astrologer came the astronomer, from the alchemist the chemist, from the mesmerist the experimental psychologist. The quack of yesterday is the professor of tomorrow.”

In the light of Dr. Bell’s generally scientific bent of mind, it strikes one as funny that the continuation this quote gets in the original story is as follows:

> “Even such subtle and elusive things as dreams will in time be reduced to system and order. When that time comes the researches of our friends on the bookshelf yonder will no longer be the amusement of the mystic, but the foundations of a science.“

  * A major movement for the admission of women into universities had, indeed, begun in Edinburgh at about this time. The movement’s leader was Sophia Jex-Blake, who’s briefly mentioned in the Murder Rooms books; Dr. Bell seems to have really been understanding of the women’s demands.
  * The premise of 'The Patient’s Eyes’ - young Doyle coming to work with his former classmate, Turnavine Budd, and finding the latter a cunning and malicious person - is all true. Even more mindbogglingly, the real Turnavine Budd came to imagine that Doyle bore an ill feeling towards him and consequently concocted a complex scheme whose sole purpose was to ruin Doyle financially. Despite this, Doyle’s true sentiments regarding Budd were ambiguous; “I liked him and _even now I can’t help liking him_ ,” he wrote many years later. Perhaps this was due to the fact that by that time Doyle had already had his revenge by writing an epistolary satirical novel, 'The Stark Munro Letters’, that was little more than a thinly veiled account of his life with Budd. TSML is rife with passages like the following:



> _One poor lady he greeted with a perfect scream. “You’ve been drinking too much tea!” he cried. “You’re suffering from tea poisoning!”_  
>  Then, without allowing her to get a word in, he clutched her by the crackling black mantle, dragged her up to the table, and held up a copy of “Taylor’s Medical Jurisprudence” which was lying there.  
> “Put your hand on the book,” he thundered, “and swear that for fourteen days you will drink nothing but cocoa.”  
> She swore with upturned eyes, and was instantly whirled off with her label in her hand, to the dispensary.

Incidentally, this particular bit is quoted almost verbatim in the Murder Rooms episode - one can hear Turnavine crying “You’re suffering from tea poisoning!” in the background of one of the scenes.

Another clear fictional inspiration for The Patient's Eyes is ACD's own "The Solitary Cyclist" - a story about a woman who feels watched while cycling alone down a road. Like in "The Solitary Cyclist", the stalker eventually turns out to be her suitor, although in The Patient's Eyes the story takes a considerably darker turn.

  * The premise of 'The Photographer’s Chair’ was, of course, derived from the real Doyle’s infatuation with spiritualism. To Doyle, who found himself unable to accept the classic organised religion (its rituals he considered ridiculous and pointless; its demand that its dogmas be accepted unquestioningly, ludicrous), spiritualism proved a happy compromise between rationality and the need for the higher justice. No doubt table-turning must seem a silly activity from the 21st-century perspective; but back in the Victorian era, it looked as though spiritualism could become a _scientific_ discipline and as though spirits could be found to be “scientific phenomena, just like X-rays”. But of course this wasn’t everything there was to it - the real Conan Doyle, too, had reasons to seek solace in spiritualism; he saw his first wife die of tuberculosis, his young brother Innes - of Spanish flu, his father - as a consequence of his alcoholism-induced mental illness. He saw the Boer war and then WWI, in which many of his friends and relatives perished. One imagines it must’ve been unbearable for him to think that all these deaths had no justification, no higher purpose. This is an attitude one clearly sees reflected in 'The Photographer’s Chair’ in the form of Doyle’s mourning the murder of Elspeth Scott and consequently being driven to spiritualism.



One of the major inspirations behind the plot of this episode seems to have been “The Camera Fiend” - a story written by Ernest Hornung, Doyle’s brother-in-law.

  * 'The Kingdom of Bones’ is only loosely based on any real events in Doyle’s life, but it's _chock full_ of references to 'The Lost World’, Doyle’s novel from the Professor Challenger series describing the adventures of a charismatic scientific rebel who discovers that dinosaurs are not, in fact, extinct. First of all, of course, the episode takes place in settings stuffed with antiquities and even actual dinosaur bones - the Museum of Natural History and then Heywood Donovan’s house. And then it also contains two of the purported real-life prototypes of Professor Challenger himself - Prof. William Rutherford and Sir Everard F. im Thurn. In fact, the episode begins with Sir Everard giving a talk about his Roraima expedition, which is said to have been a major inspiration for Prof. Challenger’s expedition to the famous plateau.



As to the Irish angle, it is likely to be a reference to the fact that the real Doyle was a Scotland-born Irishman himself - but, unlike the Donovans, he was very much in favour of peaceful coexistence of England and Ireland in the common cultural frame of the British Empire.

  * 'The White Knight Stratagem’ is the one part of Murder Rooms that has little to no correlation with the real historical timeline. True enough, Doyle’s father was mentally ill, and so badly so that the family decided to commit him to an asylum - where he subsequently died (1893) - but that’s really about it. Perhaps the only fact worth noting is that the name of Daniel Blaney’s sergeant, Michael Clarke, is an allusion to 'Micah Clarke’, Conan Doyle’s first historical novel. Curiously, one of the major themes of the novel in question is the disillusionment and the loss of innocence of its young protagonist; a motif clearly reflected in Sgt. Clarke’s arc TWKS.



In fact, all the actual mystery arcs in the TV version of Murder Rooms are entirely fictional. Thomas Neill Cream, the main antagonist of the pilot, really did study in Edinburgh University at approximately the same time Conan Doyle did, and he really did turn out to be a mass murderer (nicknamed “The Lambeth Poisoner”), but there’s no connection between him and Doyle that we know of.

However - and this may just be the most interesting part of the entire affair - the real Dr. Joseph Bell WAS a forensic expert. Only a few of the cases he worked on are known to us; one of these is the case of Eugene Chantrelle, a man who poisoned his young wife with opium. The following account of Chantrelle’s execution had been provided by Z.M. Hamilton, who witnessed the event himself:

> _The morning of the execution Chantrelle appeared on the scaffold beautifully dressed and smoking an expensive cigar. Dr. [Henry] Littlejohn was there in accordance with his duty. Just before being pinioned, Chantrelle took off his hat, took a last puff of his cigar, and waving his hand to the police physician, cried out: 'Bye-bye, Littlejohn. Don’t forget to give my compliments to Joe Bell. You both did a good job in bringing me to the scaffold.’_

Bell had once said that he had specialized in medical jurisprudence and “worked for the Crown for more than twenty years”, but that he would not disclose any details of the cases he investigated. It is thus that little is known about his forensic activities today, and, indeed, he himself is an obscure historical figure, hopelessly overshadowed by his “double”, Sherlock Holmes.

There are also some tantalising rumours of Bell having worked on the Jack the Ripper case, but as of today I have not managed to trace them to their origins and so cannot claim that there is anything more to these accounts than crude historical sensationalism.

No evidence of any forensic association between Bell and Doyle exists, but I find it very curious that Doyle gave Holmes the profession of a consulting detective supposedly without having _any_ prior knowledge of Bell’s activities. I don’t know, it sounds like there was something fishy going on here.

Whatever the case, though, Bell and Doyle had a very warm relationship, kept in touch, and Doyle really did have a photograph of Bell reposed on his mantle (though the story behind it was probably less dramatic than what we see in 'The Photographer’s Chair’) :)


	3. The White Knights Theory (s01e04)

A fandom friend once pointed out to me that the plants in this shot resemble wings and make Doyle and Blaney look like two angels:

In response to which I immediately wrote a meta:

> I think there are TWO “White Knight” figures in TWKS - Doyle, of course, and Blaney. **And of the two it is Blaney who is the “real” white knight; Doyle only pretends to be one.**
> 
> The whole point of TWKS is Doyle learning to pretend and truly deceive people, accepting and adopting this “double-think” where you simultaneously get friendly with a person and mistrust them. This is something Doyle has never done before (remember that it was _Donovan_ who invited Doyle to his house, and for purely business reasons, too, even if what he did was an act of charity; and then Doyle basically had no idea of Donovan’s doings until he got captured) - and something that goes against the “White Knight” mentality. The Noble Man does not betray those he shows friendship towards; if he mistrusts people, he says as much; if he trusts them, his loyalty is unwavering. **To a true white knight, committing betrayal is worse than fighting on the wrong side**.
> 
> By deceiving Blaney - who is not, as it were, a real villain - Doyle accepts that he isn’t like this, that his ideals aren’t as pure as he thought and that, in fact, **pure moral ideals are not viable when it comes to making tough choices in real life** and especially to crime-fighting. The White Knight part of him dies.
> 
> But Blaney IS unwaveringly loyal to his cause. Blaney never pretends to like the people he actually dislikes. Blaney saves his Isadora from being committed - something that a truly honourable man would do (and something Doyle is acutely aware he NEVER DID). **He - this cold-blooded murderer who wanted to cause Bell to suffer for the remainder of his life - IS a true white knight**. This more than anything shows Doyle what upholding these pure 14th-century values eventually leads to.
> 
> And so there’s the White Knight that is dead; and the White Knight that is a sinister parody (hear Cream undertones here? XD) of everything an ideal noble person is like. And Doyle accepts this, though hating it (“aren’t I the great hero?”).
> 
> Which is why there’s the angel symbolism. Two angels, two white knights - Doyle and Blaney.


	4. The Photographer's Chair: Obsession vs Remembrance (s01e02)

I find it curious that of all the people whose photographs we see in this episode, Bell is the only one who’s actually alive - especially considering some morbid links between Victorian photography and death (see: [post-mortem photography](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FPost-mortem_photography&t=YTliOTBmZGFmNzVlNDFmZjUzOGJjZTdkMzZjMjhkYjJhYmI5YTVmZCxEYnN1R1VQVA%3D%3D&b=t%3AN2YBVm_t7T2LJKDeLx_sKg&p=https%3A%2F%2Fthedarkbeginnings.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F128855056801%2Fthe-photographers-chair-obsession-versus&m=1)).

This is an episode where two opposites clash. But these opposites aren’t, as one might think, materialism and spiritualism; the conflict between these two is hardly of much importance and is resolved in an anticlimactic enough way. Indeed, by the end of the story the audience isn’t sure if the supernatural isn’t real!

And it is not of Doyle’s sudden liking for spiritualist ideas that Bell is afraid. No, the real conflict here is between obsession and remembrance; between healthy and unhealthy ways of coping.

The narrative of The Photographer’s Chair literally begins with Doyle starting to lose his sense of reality to the point where he’s unable to control himself and endangers his own health and career - a premise in the light of which the first few scenes are absolute nightmare fuel.

Little wonder Bell is frightened and dismayed when he starts to realize this. He, of all people, knows exactly what grieving for a loved one can be like. In Doyle’s ‘John Barrington Cowles’ he sees not merely the protagonist “plunging into the abyss in the arms of his lover” (sic!!), but Doyle himself plunging into the abyss of denial and madness in the arms of the late Elspeth.

At this point - and, in fact, all the way through the episode - it makes absolutely no difference if spirits are real. Even if they are, Doyle is no happier for the fact; on the contrary, he’s desperate, dysfunctional, and on the brink of psychological ruin. Elspeth’s ghost - the memory of Elspeth - brings him no comfort, but only haunts him into despair the way ghosts are wont to do.

The subsequent story is one of slow, gradual healing and recovery. Unlike Sir Edward Rhodes, Doyle finds it in his heart to remember that life around him has not stopped with the death of his love. Unlike Sir Edward, he is unable to delude himself into losing his compassion and affection for other people. His duties as a doctor and an amateur detective, his love for Innes, Bell’s willingness to comfort and protect him even at the cost of revealing to Doyle some of his most painful thoughts and memories all metaphorically bring him back to the land of the living.

Partially thanks to his own passions and his will to live, and partially thanks to those close to him, Doyle makes it through. The climax of the episode is the scene where he is saved from being suffocated to death - literally and symbolically. He awakes, gasping, to the sound of the Doctor’s voice asking him to breathe, and his loved one’s spirit is transformed from a mournful haunting vision into a tender guardian angel.

Sir Edward’s grief leads him to extreme, psychopathic egotism; it is doubtful he even cares for the very wife he’d lost. In his imagination, she has been transformed from a real person with her own thoughts and desires (which - let’s be real here - hardly included her husband becoming a deluded homicidal maniac after her death) into an ideal object of obsession. He’s firmly stuck in the Kübler-Ross stages of denial and anger.

In this context, photography - which, appropriately enough, symbolizes memories - plays a big narrative role. The antagonist endeavours to capture, to materialize his lost happiness in the form of a photograph; it eludes him. He no longer remembers it, but is obsessed, which is a form of madness incompatible with true remembrance.

Doyle, on the other hand, gets a photographic reminder of his happiness - a true light, bittersweet memory, a reward for his struggles. And he weeps, but these are not tears of fury and denial.

It is interesting, in the light of this imagery, to contemplate one of the final scenes of the episode - Bell giving Doyle his photograph. It is a tentative request for Doyle to remember him, undoubtedly; but also an acknowledgement that spiritualism is not the danger, that Doyle was not wrong in being interested in it. “You must choose your own way,” Bell tells Doyle, and it is not a counsel to abandon logic and embrace wishful thinking so much as it is a sign of agreement that there are different equally valid ways of treasuring one’s memories of days and people long gone.

By giving his portrait to Doyle, Bell metaphorically gifts him a piece of himself; he lets Doyle know that he’s free to remember their association and their friendship in any way he chooses - a breathtaking gesture of trust. Partly, of course, it has to do with Bell’s acute awareness of the dangers of their forensic activities. He’s seen so much death; he himself is so often on the brink of perishing - to the point where in this episode, he _belongs_ among the dead almost more than he does among the living (which is why he’s the only living person whose photograph we see).


End file.
